Eliot's Oak

Thou ancient oak! whose myriad leaves are loud
    With sounds of unintelligible speech,
    Sounds as of surges on a shingly beach,
    Or multitudinous murmurs of a crowd;
With some mysterious gift of tongues endowed,
    Thou speakest a different dialect to each;
    To me a language that no man can teach,
    Of a lost race, long vanished like a cloud.
For underneath thy shade, in days remote,
    Seated like Abraham at eventide
    Beneath the oaks of Mamre, the unknown
Apostle of the Indians, Eliot, wrote
    His Bible in a language that hath died
    And is forgotten, save by thee alone.